


Penicillin

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: Holding [21]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefighters, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, End of the World, Graphic Depictions of Illness, M/M, Plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 06:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Maybe it means nothing, he thinks. Maybe it’s just because the antibiotics were expired. Maybe old penicillin just screws people up. He’s only an EMT, not a doctor, so he doesn’t know for sure, after all. Maybe expired penicillin causes headache, nosebleeds, nausea, fatigue, fever, delirium. Maybe expired penicillin causes the same exact symptoms as the plague. It seemed like a good idea at the time…That was last week. Now, Brad’s laying back with his head in Patrice’s lap. Dying.





	Penicillin

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [elysian fields](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302313) by Anonymous. 



> Inspired by the above-listed work. You should go read that one as soon as you're done with this one, because it's excellent.
> 
> This fic is gross enough that I think it merits an M rating, even though there's no sex or violence. This is, after all, about a world-ending plague.

“It’s going to come down,” Brad murmurs. “Ceiling.”

“No it’s not, you’re going to be fine, the ceiling’s fine,” Patrice insists, playing with his hair and refusing to panic.

Maybe it means nothing, he thinks. Maybe it’s just because the antibiotics were expired. Maybe old penicillin just screws people up. He’s only an EMT, not a doctor, so he doesn’t know for sure, after all. Maybe expired penicillin causes headache, nosebleeds, nausea, fatigue, fever, delirium. Maybe expired penicillin causes the same exact symptoms as the plague.

Because they’d been out scavenging, and someone had yelled for help on the next street over. So of course, the three of them went to see what was going on: a woman’s son trapped inside a car. Somehow the boy had crawled inside and managed to lock himself in, but he was autistic and couldn’t follow directions, so they had to run back to the station and grab their tools. Brad’s arm got sliced open on part of the frame, so Patrice had dressed it and given him a dose of expired penicillin. Because it’s been over a year, now, and there are no unexpired drugs anymore. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

That was last week. Now, Brad’s laying back with his head in Patrice’s lap. Dying.

“We have more ice,” Pasta announces, all but running into the room. Plastic bags of cubes are piled between Brad’s arms and sides, and the old ones are taken away by Kevan to be re-frozen. “How’s he doing?”

“Nothing’s changed in the last ten minutes,” Patrice answers, because Pasta was literally just in here ten minutes ago asking if Brad was still awake.

The lights go out. Of course the lights go out.

“I’ll fix it!” Krej yells from downstairs, because their diesel generator is a piece of crap and keeps turning itself off.

“Pasta, grab me a flashlight or something?” Patrice asks, because he really needs to see Brad, just in case.

“Sure.” There’s some bumping around and one is pressed into his hand. “Here you go, Bergy.”

Patrice feels bad shining a light directly into Brad’s face, but it’s necessary. Brad squints at first, then scrunches his eyes all the way shut.

“Is there a flashover?” he wavers, flapping a hand like he’s trying to feel for something.

“What?” How did Brad get from _too bright for my eyes_ to _dangerous fire phenomenon_? “No, Marchy, no flashover. You’re going to be okay. You’re here with us.”

“Bergy…? That you…?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“…you smell really bad, Bergs.”

Patrice chuckles. “Yeah, I know, it’s not shower day, remember?”

“Yeah… whatever you say…” He shivers a little, which is in direct contrast to what he says next. “Too hot in here…”

“You’re sick, Marchy, you have a fever. We’ve got bags of ice on you, though. You’ll feel better soon.” God, he wants that to be true. Patrice will ignore logic for as long as he needs to, because anything other than Brad getting better is unthinkable. “You’re going to be okay in a few days.”

Then Brad seems to snap back to lucidity. “Pat,” he whispers, “I think I’m gonna die. It feels like I’m dying.” It really, _really_ doesn’t help that right at this moment, his nose starts bleeding again.

“No, you’re not going to die,” Patrice insists. “I won’t let that happen, Marchy, I promise. You’re going to be okay. You’re sick right now, and it sucks, but you’re going to get better.”

“…you’re a shit liar, Bergy. This is why everyone always fleeces you at cards.”

“I’m not lying.” He’s not. He keeps telling himself that Brad will be okay eventually, Brad doesn’t have the plague. If he says it long enough and loud enough, it’ll become fact. “There’s six guys looking after you, Marchy. All those hospital patients just had one overworked nurse per twenty of them. Z and Matt are out looking for that super-extra-strength Tylenol, and once they find some for you your fever won’t be so bad. And Charlie brought back one of those bicycle pumps yesterday, so we can re-inflate the soccer ball for two-touch and you can play with us again once you’re better.”

“Oh my god, Bergy, shut up, okay?” Brad groans. “You’re like people whose relatives get cancer or some shit and then they’re like ‘oh he’s a fighter.’ No, it’s fucking cancer, cancer kills people. Thought you had more respect for me than this bullshit.”

“Brad,” he answers quietly, “people don’t say that for the relative with cancer. They say those things because the idea of someone they love dying is too painful for them to acknowledge.”

“Yeah, well…” Brad rolls his head against Patrice’s leg. “Maybe you should’a thought’a that before you went back into an apartment building with busted ribs…” He’s not lucid anymore, apparently. “Fucking… Christ, Bergy, you punctured your fucking lung and went back in anyway…”

“It’s okay, Marchy. I’m okay,” he whispers, because there’s nothing else to say right now.

* * *

The world swims around him. Ha. Swims. Brad grins. How come nobody’s laughing with him? It’s so funny…

“Bergy?” he asks, seeing a familiar perfect face floating over his eyes. “Hey, handsome… listen… I don’t think I can come in for my shift, it’s too cold out.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of you,” Patrice murmurs, feeling his forehead and wiping under his nose for him.

“Fuck, man, it’s really cold right now… can you turn up the furnace? It’s in the kitchen…” Brad points, very helpfully, in the direction of his kitchen. Patrice, for some reason, doesn’t move. “Okay then… uh… like, I really can’t come in for my shift.”

“It’s alright, Marchy, you don’t have to go in for a shift.”

“Ooh… okay then… can I just stay here with you? Do you have to work? Maybe you’re assigned to the meat wagon today…”

“No, I’m not. I’m just going to stay here with you until you feel better.”

“Yeah. That sounds good.” Brad reaches up (his arm is shaky, so now the world isn’t just swimming, it’s tremoring too. Weird. Whatever. He doesn’t care right now) and runs his fingertips through Patrice’s scruff. He’s always wanted to do that. “You’re so prickly…”

“Sorry. I haven’t been able to shave for awhile.”

“’S okay, I like it.” Brad does it again and starts giggling. “It’s okay, Bergy,” he says again. “I like your scratchy face.” Then he blinks and realizes, slowly, that he’s not on his couch at home. The world isn’t shaking, he is. He’s really fucking sick right now. He’s probably about to bite it. But somehow, that’s less important compared to… “Oh, fuck, tell me I didn’t just do that.”

“Do what?” Patrice asks, concerned and sad and so, so pretty. He’ll never not be pretty.

“Guess not,” Brad decides, relieved. That would be really fucking embarrassing. “Fuck, fevers are the literal worst…”

“I know. Do you want a blanket?”

“Nah. I’ll be too hot again in a second.” He shifts, tries to get comfortable, but his body doesn’t feel like listening and he can’t even sit up. “Pat, uh, can you just… I’m in like, a fucking lake of my own cold sweat right now…”

“Oh, yeah, sure.” Patrice gently pulls him upright and peels off his sopping undershirt, leaning him against the corner post of the bunk. “Do you want new sheets, too? We don’t… we don’t have any clean ones, but we do have dry ones.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice…” Brad limply wraps an arm around the corner post because the walls are running laps around his head right now and he’s not completely sure which way is up. Then his stomach turns inside out and he has just enough time to think _oh, fuck_ before he’s puking all over himself. “Shit… Bergy… prob’ly a good think you’re not bothering with actual clean sheets right now…”

“It’s okay, just try not to fall off the bed,” Patrice answers, running back over a few seconds later with a towel.

“Shouldn’t you wear gloves?” he wonders, like that’s their biggest problem right now. “Could be contagious.”

“I’ve been taking care of you for the last five days. If I was going to get sick, I would’ve by now.”

“Oh. Good.” The whole room moves and Brad doesn’t even know he’s falling until Patrice catches him and rights him again. “Fuck. Sorry ’bout that.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, it’s not your fault.”

Patrice cleans him up as much as possible and gets him into dry clothes, then sits him on the floor in order to change the sheets. It feels good when he’s settled back into a slightly fresher bed, because at least now he can lay down again and everything stops shifting around him.

“Can you just… keep talking to me?” Brad asks, nervous. “Uh, it helps. It helps if you talk. I keep falling asleep or hallucinating or whatever, but when you’re talking it helps me find my way back again…”

“Sure, Marchy. What would you like to talk about?”

Brad grins from where he’s sprawled. He wonders where that pillow went, the one that lives in the corner of his couch. Oh, well. “Will you go on a date with me sometime?” He’s been thinking about asking for weeks, but something always comes up, whether it’s a baby that swallowed a nickel or a three-car accident in an intersection or some idiot who dumped water on a kitchen grease fire. “I know we’re like, super busy and shit, but… we should go on a date. Bro, I have such a thing for you, it’s not even funny.”

Patrice nods, and he looks sad even though he’s smiling. “Of course, Marchy. I’d love to go on a date with you when this is all over.”

* * *

Z and Matt don’t get back until the next day. They have no Tylenol with them.

“Bergy, I swear we looked everywhere, there just wasn’t any,” Matt babbles.

Patrice almost puts his fist through the window. It’s not Matt’s fault. It’s been more than a year. Of course there’s no Tylenol left, it’s all been eaten by now.

“Fuck!” he yells instead, scooping up a drinking glass off the counter and pegging it at the wall just so he can watch it smash. If they’d found some Tylenol, it would’ve gone a long way to helping Brad’s temperature. It would’ve given Brad a better shot at pulling through. It would’ve… “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” he hisses, grabbing onto his hair and almost succeeding at yanking tufts of it out of his scalp. Finally he looks at Z: “Well, now what?”

“We found two packets of regular strength ibuprofen,” his captain replies. “It’s better than nothing. We’ll crush the tablets and dissolve them into his IV, if we do one tablet at a time he only gets two hundred mikes but it’ll at least be something and it’ll last sixteen hours.”

Patrice considers this, then nods. “Okay. Let’s do that.” He briefly checks the freezer. “Good, the next batch of ice is almost ready… did you find any Dramamine?”

“No, there was none. But… maybe that’s not so bad for Marchy, he can barely swallow anyway,” Z points out.

“Every time he sits up, he vomits,” Patrice answers, doing nothing to keep the frustration out of his voice. There’s no point in hiding how he feels about this. “He’s still sweating like crazy, too… we’re out of 5000 mL bags, so we’re down to the 1000 mL ones until Krej finishes sterilizing the water to make more saline.”

“Patrice,” Z interrupts, stern. “Take a breath, please. The saline will be ready in ten minutes to refill the bags. We have some tiny bit of medicine for Marchy, even if it’s not what we really wanted to find. All of us are doing what we can, so you should calm down, now. Having a fit won’t help him.”

He does take a breath, closing his eyes as the air enters his lungs. He lets Z’s words sink into his brain and take effect. Everyone’s trying to save Marchy, there are six other trained medics besides him working on the issue. Patrice feels his outrage still a little at that and opens his eyes again.

“Okay. Let me check his IV, once it needs to be switched we can give him the ibuprofen.”

Z follows him upstairs to the bunks, where Pasta is sitting and quietly talking to Brad. He jumps up and rushes over when he spots them.

“Bergy, come here, he keeps asking where you went.”

Patrice does just that, settling on the side of Brad’s bed and looking him over. He doesn’t appear to be any worse than yesterday, but that means nothing.

“Bergy, you came back… but didn’t you break your foot?”

“It healed,” he answers. There was that one time, a couple years before the plague hit, where he’d been on the ambulance that day instead but had ended up running into a burning building anyway with no turnout gear. A chunk of debris had cracked some of his metatarsals, but he’d still carried two toddlers down three flights of stairs to safety. All the newspapers called him a hero, when really he was just being stupid, because he was in a cast for months afterwards and couldn’t work. “Pasta said you were worried about me.”

“Just didn’t know where you went… you were here, then you disappeared. Now you’re here again. I like it better when you’re here.” Brad reaches up a trembling hand, lightly touching his chin and then his ear. Patrice wishes the circumstances were better for Brad to be feeling his face. “I think I should go home early… my nose keeps running, I think I have a cold.”

Well… he’s almost right. Patrice puts on a smile for Brad. “Why don’t you just take a quick nap, Marchy, and then you can see if you want to go home from work.” Tragically, it’s so much easier to go along with whatever nonsense comes out of his mouth than to try arguing with him. Patrice will let him believe that he’s only feeling a cold coming on, and that he can drive home to watch tv and eat soup until he’s better.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” Brad asks.

“Of course. Just try to sleep a little, we have everything under control here.”

Patrice has mixed feelings about Brad sleeping. On the one hand, while he knows plenty about the plague’s symptoms from bussing hundreds of patients to hospitals already filled up with victims, he has no idea how things actually ended for those patients, and he’s scared Brad could die unconscious. On the other, if Brad’s asleep, he’s not suffering as much and what little energy he has can be put to use trying to fight off the illness.

Brad’s eyes roll closed and Patrice looks over his shoulder to nod at Z. Pasta is left with Brad once again so that they can go crush up the ibuprofen tablets. In the kitchen, Charlie is putting the closed containers of recently-boiled saline into the fridge so that they can cool and be used to fill IV bags. A thought occurs to him.

“Charlie,” he begins quietly, “were you with Jake when he…?”

“Yeah… yeah, I was there. Why?”

“I know it hurts to answer this, but you should try to describe how it happened. I need to know what to look for if it starts happening to Marchy.”

Charlie’s whole body is written with distress, but still he nods. “Okay. Uh, he, his fever got way worse, like it went from 38.3 to 41.6 in three hours. And then it… fuck, it wasn’t just his nose bleeding, his mouth started bleeding too, and…” Charlie stops and takes a shaking breath, wiping one of his eyes. “Uh, he started having seizures. I ran out in the hall to yell for help, but there was nobody, all the nurses were busy and most of the doctors left way before that. So. There wasn’t any ice, there wasn’t any NSAIDs. There was nothing there for him, and… once the seizures stopped, he didn’t wake up again. He died about an hour and a half later. All I could do was sit there, holding his hand…”

Charlie’s voice chokes off and Patrice pulls him over for a hug. He feels terrible for asking, but he needed to know. He needs to know so he can save Brad.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Bergy,” he hiccups, “we gotta do better for Marchy. Nobody should die like that.”

“We’re doing everything,” Patrice promises. He wishes Charlie’s boyfriend had been brought here and not the hospital. Maybe they could’ve saved him.

And that’s when he realizes what they need to do.

* * *

Arguing. Why are the guys always arguing? Someone’s always bitching at someone else for something stupid.

“Can’t you guys do that somewhere else?” Brad groans. “I’m tryna sleep in case there’s a call…”

Hands. Someone’s touching him, feeling his wrist. Something presses lightly to his chest.

“Try to relax, Marchy.” He recognizes the voice and opens his eyes. Patrice. Patrice is here, distracting him from his sleep schedule. “Just let Z finish doing vitals on you, and then we’ll leave.”

“No, you should stay here,” Brad decides. “Everyone else goes. But you should stay here and cuddle me.”

Patrice chuckles and smooths down his hair. “I wish I could, but I have to go in a few minutes. We have to go to the hospital and get something, but then we’ll be back.”

“Why don’t you just bus the patient? Hospital shouldn’t have to come to them.”

“Because the hospital’s already full. So we’re going to go there and bring back some supplies.”

The insanity of this idea reaches through to Brad, and he remembers where he is. He remembers _how_ he is.

“Pat, you can’t go to a hospital, we already talked about this a few months ago… they’re full of dead bodies… it’s contaminated…”

“But we have to, Marchy. We need better medicine for you or you’re going to die. It’s okay, we have the HAZMAT gear, we’re going to suit up before we go in. We’ll probably be back by tomorrow night, next morning at the latest.”

“Boy, I’m getting pretty close if you’re this desperate, huh?” Brad jokes. He feels his nose start bleeding again. Fuck. “Be careful, Pat. I’m not worth it for something to happen to you.”

“Don’t say that,” Patrice insists, wiping the blood off his face and then taking hold of his hand. “You’re worth it, Brad, and we’re going to help you. Me, Pasta and Kevan are going, so Charlie, Z, Matt and Krej will still be here to take care of you until we get back, okay? You won’t be alone and we’re going to bring you a metric fuckton of Tylenol and some real IV bags. Maybe even some of those cold packs that you crack to get going.”

Brad nods slightly. “Just come back at all, even if you can’t get any of that shit…” He thinks for a second. Thinking is too hard. Fuck. “I promise I won’t die while you’re gone, though, because I know you’d feel super guilty about that. I’ll wait until after you get back.”

“You’re not going to die, Bradley. I won’t let you.”

* * *

Technically speaking, Mass General is within walking distance of the fire station. Technically. Until you factor in the jammed cars blocking off even sidewalks, which have to be climbed over when they’re carrying biohazard gear and a pressure washer with a car battery to run it. So it takes them three hours to make a journey that ordinarily would only be half as long. That’s three hours of Brad getting sicker.

The parking lot is clogged with ambulances, and they stop just outside it.

“Okay.” Patrice looks at Kevan as he and Pasta start putting on their crinkly Tyvek suits. “We’re going to do it floor by floor, and you’ll check the buses while we’re in there, right?”

“Yeah, I planned on it. Try to find something with wheels if there’s too much stuff to carry, and no cardboard containers. We can’t decon cardboard.”

“Even boxes of gloves?” Pasta wonders.

“Even those.”

They finish donning and Kevan tapes them up, and they head for the emergency room entrance. It’s somehow worse and better at the same time when they actually go in - Patrice had imagined bodies piled on top of each other and things like that, but no. His headlamp shows him a mostly-decayed corpse in rotting scrubs at the nurses station, skull resting on folded arms. Two victims lying on the floor in front of the same nurses station, who probably died waiting to be seen. The linoleum is covered in dried gore, and their boots make sticky noises with every step.

“Don’t throw up,” Patrice reminds Pasta. “Because even if you do, you still can’t take off your respirator.”

“I know, I can do this.”

“Good.”

They head for the Pyxis machine and find it cracked open, already empty. The back supply room, though, has some of those chemical ice packs that he described to Brad, so they grab an empty box and pile those in. Patrice ends up pushing a corpse off a stretcher so they can use that to pile supplies on. So begins their slow trek through the building, looking in even the stupidest places for anything that can help Brad. Patrice thinks it’s indescribably lucky that most looters don’t know what a lot of things are, which means that really valuable things like IV bags of ordinary saline are still there in minute quantities. All of the lactated ringer’s solution is gone, of course, but they manage to find five bags of saline. Even better is when they go into the surgical department and discover eleven bottles of sterile water, which can be used to make more saline without having to filter and boil a bunch of rainwater first.

What’s really great, and is apparently a place nobody else thought to look for some reason, is the psychiatric unit. Because lorazepam, both in tablets and for injection, is there. That’s really good news, because now if Brad has seizures like Charlie talked about they have a way to counteract it. And, because the one person who picked through the psych meds was clearly out to get high and not get better from something, there’s Tylenol. Three entire bottles of it.

“Oh thank god,” Patrice shouts as he snatches them out of the cabinet.

“What?” Pasta asks, coming over with an armload of packaged insulin needles.

“We’ve got NSAIDs in quantity,” he answers, grinning behind his respirator. “Alright, let’s go back. I think we’ve got what we need.”

They get lost once on their way out, but finally make it back to Kevan and are greeted with a pressure washer spray to blast any residue from dead bodies off their suits and the supplies. The suits and respirator filters are just left in a pile, while the masks are put into the rucksack with the other stuff. While they were in there, Kevan found half a box of gloves and four alcohol pads in an ambulance. Patrice still doesn’t dare get his hopes up - something could’ve happened while they were out doing this.

And it turns out, something _did_ happen while they were gone.

Charlie grabs Patrice by the arm and starts dragging him to the stairs: “We’ve been trying to keep it from getting too bad, but we’re running out of ice and his fever’s getting worse!”

Kevan runs after them with the bag of supplies and they find Matt frantically wiping blood out from under Brad’s nose. “Here, start cracking these.” Chemical ice packs are shoved into Charlie’s hands before Kevan starts pulling on gloves.

“Pasta, crush up a thousand mikes of Tylenol and put it in one of those IV bags,” Patrice orders, also pulling on gloves and reaching for the lorazepam. “Charlie, stop panicking, crack those ice packs already!”

He puts a dose of lorazepam directly into Brad’s IV line to hopefully stop a seizure before it can happen, then pulls the thin top sheet off so that more heat can escape. Kevan, meanwhile, helps Pasta get the Tylenol ready and then hangs the fresh bag. The fluid line is run wide open so that the Tylenol will find its way in faster.

“Okay, they’re getting cold,” Charlie announces, stuffing the chemical packs into Brad’s armpits and between his thighs. The melted ice bags and taken away by Pasta, who clearly just doesn’t want to stick around and watch this. “Were we quick enough?”

“I guess we’re going to find out,” Patrice answers, snapping off his gloves and tossing them away in a random direction. He sighs and glances over at the bag of stuff they looted from the hospital. “You guys can go if you want, I got this.”

Kevan leaves, but Charlie stays. “Please let me help…”

Survivor’s guilt. Charlie couldn’t help Jake and will never completely get over it, so Patrie nods. Charlie can help if he needs to. “Okay. So… put eight hundred mikes of Tylenol into each of those other four bags, okay? Look, we have so much of it now, we can at least keep him from getting worse.”

“Yeah.” Charlie starts crushing up tabs of Tylenol. “Just… remember, Bergy, there was nobody around helping Jake. Marchy has all seven of us. He has a better chance, especially since you guys brought back all this.”

Patrice nods. He’s been thinking it all night, but it’s so nice to hear it out loud. “Thanks, Charlie.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

When Brad wakes up, he’s immediately confused by the fact that he’s not confused. He’s staring up at the bunk over him, because he’s in the fire station. There’s no haze around him for once. Looking over, the bunk on his right is piled with bottles, needles, and improvised IV bags. The bunk on his left has Patrice Bergeron sleeping, facing away from him.

Footsteps - Krej comes into his field of view, dropping a few more IV bags onto the heap. Then he turns to Brad, stethoscope in hand. “Hey, Marchy. How do you feel right now?”

“Uh… I’m like, awake for real. When’s the last time that happened, huh?”

“That’s really good,” Krej smiles. “I’m going to do your vitals, okay?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Time is it?”

“It’s…” Krej checks his watch. “Almost three. Why, do you want lunch?”

“Almost three? Why’s Bergy sleeping?”

“He was freaking out because you didn’t wake up for all of yesterday, so we made him take an ativan and lie down.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Krej checks his pulse and listens to his heart and lungs, then sticks the thermometer in his mouth. “Good news, you’re down to 37.5 degrees. That’s the lowest it’s been since you got sick.”

“Still a fever,” Brad grumbles, squirming a little under the sheet. He’s too warm. “So what’s all that shit over there?”

“Oh, they went to Mass General and found all of that. It’s really good for you that the psych ward stocked Tylenol, too.”

“Great. So do I get to live, then?”

“Hopefully. You seem to be doing better for now… it looked like the fever would kill you, not so much whatever you got sick from.”

Brad nods, then looks back over at Patrice. “I think I said a bunch of stupid shit to him while I was out of it…”

“You did, but he didn’t mind.” Then Krej snickers. “Also you asked him out on a date.”

“Fuck, really? God dammit, I thought I dreamed that,” he groans.

“It’s okay, we all know you only said it because you’re too chicken shit to admit you have a crush on him while you’re lucid,” Krej cackles as he changes Brad’s IV.

“Wait, you know about that?”

“Bro, everyone knows about it. The only one who doesn’t is Bergy.”

“Yeah, well…” Brad keeps looking at Patrice. “Isn’t there a rule about not dating coworkers?”

“The deputy chief isn’t here to tell you no, Marchy. I think that rule doesn’t apply anymore.”

* * *

Something hits him in the back of the head.

Patrice peels his eyes open and feels with his hand; there’s nothing there. Maybe he imagined it? Then something else taps against his back and he hears it rattling lightly on the floor. Rolling over, there’s a pen and a pen cap, and an annoyed Brad in the next bunk over.

“Rise and shine, you lazy bastard, it’s almost time for dinner.”

“Marchy…? Did you throw these at me? Why did you wake me up?”

“Because I wanted to,” Brad shrugs. “Come talk to me, I’m fucking bored over here.”

Patrice drags himself out of bed and staggers over, sitting clumsily on the side of Brad’s bunk. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“Not really. I’m just bored and I’m too tired to get up, plus if I did I’d have to carry around a stupid IV bag and my fluid line would get caught on shit or stepped on or something.”

It now occurs to Patrice that Brad is, in fact, awake and lucid. His brain is still sluggish from the others practically force-feeding him a lorazepam earlier. “Oh. You look like you’re feeling better.”

“I’m tired and hungry. So… yeah, significant improvement. Did you have fun at the hospital?”

“No. We had to go through the whole place to find enough stuff for you. But it looks like it was worth it.” He slowly reaches for one of Brad’s hands and takes hold of it, rubbing the knuckles with his thumb. “I’m glad you’re back, Marchy. You really scared us for awhile… I got back right as your fever was spiking, you could’ve had a seizure…”

“Pat, chill, okay? I didn’t have a seizure… I don’t think I did, anyway. I’m sure Krej would’a told me when he did my vitals earlier.”

“Yeah… Charlie said there’s an increase in temperature, then seizures, and… we shot you up with lorazepam to keep that from happening. He was panicking, too, he thought you were about to die just like Jake did.”

“Did you panic, too?”

“Yeah, a little… but I didn’t let anyone else know that I was.” Patrice squeezes Brad’s hand a little. “God, Marchy, I thought you were on your way out…”

“Yeah, but I kept my promise.” Brad has the audacity to grin around these words. “I didn’t start dying until you got back.”

“Don’t joke about this,” he insists. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s kind of funny,” Brad argues. “Plus, if you don’t laugh, you’re going to start crying, I’m just trying to make it so you won’t have to cry.”

“I’m not crying,” Patrice lies, because his eyes are stinging. “I’m just… I’m still really tired, and… fuck, Brad, I thought you were gonna die…”

He crawls the rest of the way onto the bunk and buries his sobs in Brad’s neck. Brad wraps an arm across his shoulders and uses the other hand to stroke his hair. It’s actually kind of nice, ignoring the circumstances. Who knew cuddling Brad would feel this good.

“It’s okay, Bergy. I’m still here.”

“Yeah.” He tries to get his breathing under control. “You’re still here.”

Brad clears his throat after a moment. “Uh, listen, so I said a bunch of… really dumb things to you over the last few days…”

“It’s alright, I know you didn’t mean it…”

“Uh… here’s the thing, though, I kinda _did_ mean it. Some of it. Most of it. Okay, all of it. But like. If it made things weird for you, I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t make things weird. I’m really flattered.”

“But…?”

“But nothing, I’m just flattered,” Patrice insists, still sniffing a little but otherwise okay again. “It’s been awhile since a guy asked me out.”

“Since a _guy_ …? Oh, right, sorry. I forgot who I’m talking to for a second, even straight guys wanted to bang you.”

“I’m not sure why. My nose didn’t heal right when I broke it.”

“It doesn't matter, you’re still gorgeous.”

“You only like me for my looks,” he teases.

Brad snorts. “No… I like everything about you, Bergy. You’re perfect.”

“Okay, you need to stop saying that, it’s not true. I broke a drinking glass a few days ago, and it was on purpose.”

“Be nice to me, I’m still sick.”

“I’m always nice to you, Marchy.” He finally raises his head to look and immediately notices Brad’s IV running down. “Here, let me get that real quick-”

“No, I still got like ten more minutes. Stay and cuddle.”

Patrice relaxes again, wiping his eyes dry and settling with his face on the pillow next to Brad’s. Brad smells like sweat, but he doesn’t really mind because he knows that he probably smells just as bad.

“You kept touching my face, too,” he offers, feeling a little awkward about it.

“Yeah, I… I always wanted to, and it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Brad grins, blushing slightly. “Plus I’m fucking jealous that you can grow such a nice beard. Mine looks like shit, but yours just turns you even more handsome.” Then he makes a face. “Speaking of that, why did you shave it off?”

“We had to wear respirators when we went to raid the hospital.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about that. It’s too bad. You have nice scruff.”

Patrice chuckles and can’t help kissing the side of his neck. Brad’s skin is still a little too warm, but he doesn’t feel like a furnace the way he had before they got him the Tylenol. “I’ll grow it out again just for you, then.” He sits up. “That IV bag really needs to get switched, though.”

“IV bags are such a buzz-kill,” Brad whines.

“It’s okay, I’ll come back after,” Patrice smiles. Krej helpfully scrawled _Tylenol dropped 14:45_ on the side of the bunk, so he knows to place a normal saline bag instead. “There.” He lays down with Brad again. “You really have to stay hydrated, Marchy.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“Once your fever breaks you won’t have to be stuck with that anymore. And there’s the added benefit that we won’t just be putting canned vegetable soup through a food processor for you to drink.”

“Yeah, that’s literally the worst thing ever. I can’t wait to go back to raccoon shish kebabs instead.”

“We had squirrel ones instead yesterday night. The raccoon ones are better.”

“Squirrel? Gross. At least raccoons eat meat.”

Patrice shuffles a little and tucks Brad’s head under his chin. “I can try to find something better for you, if you want.”

“You’re the best, Pat. We really should go on a date sometimes like I said.”

He laughs. “How would we? There’s no place to go!”

“Well… some romantic scavenging, just the two of us. Pasta could stay here and help Matt do the vegetables on the roof.”

“Okay, we’ll have to run that by Z, though.”

“Right. I have other ideas.”

“How about we get you better first, and then we can worry about dating,” Patrice replies. “You’re really lucky your wound didn’t get infected on top of all this, and we have to wait for that to finish healing, too.”

“Don’t be a killjoy, Bergy, I already know that. I’m talking about after.”

“Okay, then. Maybe we can sit outside and eat sometime, away from everyone else. That’s kind of romantic, right?” Patrice asks. He’s scared, though. He’s scared Brad isn’t really getting better, that things will take a left turn and them making plans is a jinx. “Marchy, we should really save this until you’re not sick anymore, okay?”

“Fine. What do I get while I’m waiting, then?”

Patrice thinks for a second. “A kiss?”

“I could be contagious.”

“You’re not contagious, nobody else who touched you is sick and we weren’t wearing gloves until Kevan found some the other day.”

Patrice rearranges them so their faces are level and kisses him. It’s light, closed-mouthed, but it fills a hole in his chest that he didn’t realize was there. It makes him wish, desperately hard, that Brad really is improving and will eventually get better. Brad needs to recover so that they can go on “dates” and have more kisses and get made fun of by the other firemen for being too sappy with each other. Patrice is still scared, but he also knows how stubborn Brad is - Brad _will_ get better if for no other reason than because he wants to go on this date with Patrice. Brad wants those kisses and that amount of chirping just as bad as Patrice does, if not more. So Patrice is only half as worried as he was a few seconds ago. Brad’s going to be okay eventually. They’re going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Some random things:
> 
> 1\. Most firefighters are also EMTs, which is why all of them know how to do this stuff to take care of Brad.  
> 2\. Many fire departments also stock HAZMAT supplies, and the firefighters are trained in their use.  
> 3\. The idea I had was that this isn't a "naturally occurring" plague, or even a typical one: it was engineered by CRISPR to react specifically with certain antibiotics and kill the victim that way, making it much harder to stop or even detect until it's too late. This did not make it into the fic because how would eight firefighters know that?  
> 4\. Regarding the line about the diesel generator: diesel engines can run on vegetable oil with no problems. Gasoline goes bad after about 8 months and will no longer run an engine. Most people don't know that.
> 
> Now with a sequel: [Box Lunch (And Other Bad Food In The Apocalypse)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194742)
> 
> Please comment. Seriously, it's necessary.


End file.
